WOSU Theatre Critic Joy Reilly talks with Chuck Helm, director of performing arts at the Wexner Center about 'Terminus,' a new play by Mark Oâ€™Rowe performed by the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland.

For one night only, the Wexner Center will bringÂ Terminus, a new Irish play that will take the audience to the skies above Dublin, Ireland, to Ohio Stateâ€™s campus.

â€œIn this particular show, Terminus, itâ€™s an extremely dark comedy,â€ Chuck Helm, director of performing arts for the Wexner Center, told WOSU theatre critic Joy Reilly. â€œItâ€™s very inventive in itâ€™s form, but the whole show is in rhyme. Itâ€™s not like Elizabethan rhyme, itâ€™s very sort of, street language.â€

Mark Oâ€™Rowe, a young Irish playwright, wrote and directed the play Terminus, which was first performed by Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, in 2007.

Helm said Oâ€™Rowe has used this idea of love of language in his other plays, such as Howie the Rookie, and that it really complements the plot, especially in Terminus.

â€œBut [thereâ€™s] this kind of ornateness to it, which kind of heightened the whole phantasmic oracle scenario that heâ€™s painting with this show,â€ Helm said.

The show is simply staged, Helm said, with only three actors whose interwoven monologues donâ€™t directly interact with each other.

â€œThe set is pretty dark,â€ Helm said. â€œThere are these shards of broken mirrors that hover over their heads.â€

Helm said the mirrors somewhat symbolize Irelandâ€™s current fractured state of society.

â€œThis idea of sort of a society thatâ€™s losing touch with its roots, thatâ€™s having its struggles trying to find its way in the world,â€ Helm said.

Some aspects of the show will certainly give audience members a jolt, Helm said, but other aspects are extremely funny.

â€œThatâ€™s one thing about how it reflects contemporary Ireland,â€ Helm said. â€œThat kind of wit thatâ€™s always been a part of Irish consciousness, at the same time with this very kind of dark, strange twist.â€

Terminus will be playing at OSUâ€™s Thurber Theatre at the Drake Center on Wednesday, March 9 at 8 p.m.